


Cascade, correlate

by magicites



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: M/M, is texting fic cliche yet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-13
Updated: 2014-08-13
Packaged: 2018-02-13 01:45:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2132469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magicites/pseuds/magicites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sender: Hinata Shoyo<br/>Tokyo!!!<br/>15/9 19:37</p>
<p>Message: my parents are going to Tokyo this weekend and they’re taking me and Natsu with them!!!<br/>lets hang out!!!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cascade, correlate

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this as a birthday fic for my friend [bea](http://sawamuraeijun.tumblr.com)! And she gave me the ok to post this on here as well, so....here it is. My peace offering to the Kenhina fandom at large. Sets its down here.

Sender: Hinata Shoyo  
Tokyo!!!  
15/9 19:37

Message: my parents are going to Tokyo this weekend and they’re taking me and Natsu with them!!!   
lets hang out!!!

Kenma is used to a life of routine. There are certain things that stay constant from day to day, or from week to week – things like breakfast time and classes and practice all just become another checkpoint to reach. Chores or finishing homework are just goals he needs to achieve before being able to move onto the next, more interesting, point.

Somehow, Shoyo’s nightly texts have become another part of his routine. The topics vary from day to day (and even from text to text), but they always send his phone buzzing like clockwork.

He can picture the scene behind that message: Shoyo sitting cross-legged at his desk, damp hair hanging in his face, trying his best to put off studying for just a bit longer by sending off rapid-fire text messages. The proof is in the multitude of pictures he has sent of that exact same scene, all slightly blurry and showcasing whatever silly expression that currently dominates his face. They take up what little precious space Kenma has left on his phone, but he can’t be bothered to delete them quite yet.

Shoyo isn’t a bother. The amount of priority Shoyo has in Kenma’s life is actually a little unsettling. He’s the only person whose texts take priority over a game, unless he happens to be in a spot where he’ll lose if he neglects the game for the twenty seconds it takes to send a reply. That simple fact by itself is amazing.

-

15/9 19:39  
From: Kozume Kenma  
Subject: Re: Tokyo!!!

sure. im free this weekend. what should we do?

“You’re texting him again!”

Shoyo is used to a lot of things. He is used to people being taller than him. He is used to having something burning underneath his skin. He is used to anger, to joy, to fear, rushing through his veins and propelling him forward. There are times when he feels small – almost impossibly so – and the world threatens to swallow him whole. Every day is a fight to the top.

What he is not used to is the way that a giddy warmth spreads through him whenever he texts Kenma. Naturally, this spurs him to text him as often as possible without appearing too weird or clingy, balancing out to about an hour or two’s worth of messages every night.

Usually he reserves the stream of messages for the time after dinner when it’s supposed to be just him and his homework (which quickly turns into him, his phone, and occasionally his homework), so he can avoid problems like this one. But he had to leave his room to get a glass of water, and he couldn’t bring himself to abandon Kenma like that. “Be right back” was out of the question.

Everything would have been perfect if Natsu hadn’t been sitting on the kitchen counter and trying to grab the box of cookies on the top shelf of the cabinet. She’s too little to reach it, and too scared to jump for it. She turns her frustration on Shoyo instead.

“Yeah, I am! So what?” He asks, sticking his tongue out at her. She eagerly returns the action, but when she opens her eyes, she bursts into giggles.

“You look so silly!”

“Do not!”

“Do too!”

“Do _not_!”

“Shoyo has a cruuuuush,” Natsu sings. Shoyo nearly freezes in place, save for the small squeak that escapes his mouth. He can feel his face exploding with color.

“W-what do you even know about crushes, Natsu!?” Shoyo snaps. His retort is dumb and they both know it.

“Enough to know that you have one on Kenma.” She folds her arms and closes her eyes, basking in her newfound pride. She must feel brilliant.

Shoyo has nothing else to say to her. He splutters, and tries to find some sort of barb to throw back at her, but she’s too young to be embarrassed over most things. He racks his brain for any bad deed she may have done that he didn’t explicitly promise to keep from their parents, but he comes up with nothing. She has all of her bases covered.

“See! You doooo,” she practically sings. When her song ends, she claps her hands together and bounces in place. “Oh! Oh! Does he know?”

“N-n-n-no!” Shoyo practically screams. “He doesn’t know about the crush I definitely don’t have on him!” He combs through every mental file cabinet he has just to find some sort of dirt on Natsu. Again, he ends his task empty-handed. Dammit, Natsu.

There’s a moment of silence. Shoyo uses that time to remember that he came down here for a reason.

He has since forgotten that reason.

Natsu giggles. “Good luck with your crush, big bro!” she says as he stomps out of the kitchen.

Halfway up the stairs, Shoyo yells back at her, “it’s not a crush!” He doesn’t know if she heard him or not, but by this point, he doesn’t really care. He slams the door to his room shut, locks it in place to keep her from bothering him any further, and collapses into his desk chair.

He takes a deep breath in order to calm himself down, but deep breathing has never worked for him. Instead, he smacks his cheeks a couple of times, and unlocks his phone. As he re-reads Kenma’s message, he feels a smile come over his face. It stays even as he sends his reply.

When he closes his phone, and his grin slowly starts to fade, a strange thought makes its way into his mind. Maybe Natsu is right; maybe he does have a crush on Kenma.

“Oh noooooo,” he says, resting his head against his desk. The thought slowly roots itself into his mind. He can already tell that it isn’t going to leave.

-

Sender: Hinata Shoyo  
Whoo-hoo!  
15/9 19:55

Message:  ﾉ≧∀≦)ﾉ yesssss!!!! Can I visit your house??? I really wanna see where you live

-

15/9 19:57  
From: Kozume Kenma  
Subject: Re: Whoo-hoo!

i asked my parents. they said you can stay the night.   
uh, not your sister, though. just you. hope that won’t be a problem.

-

Sender: Hinata Shoyo  
YEAH!!!!  
15/9 19:58

Message:  ヾ(@°▽°@)ノ└(^o^)┐ヾ(ﾟ∀ﾟゞ) (*｀･ω･)ゞ

-

15/9 19:59  
From: Kozume Kenma  
Subject: Re: YEAH!!!!

um…are you ok, shoyo?

-

Sender: Hinata Shoyo  
Re: Re: YEAH!!!!  
15/9 19:59

Message:  im great!!!! I cant wait until next week now!   
See you then!!!

-

15/9 20:00  
From: Kozume Kenma  
Subject: See you soon.

just a few more days, shoyo. i’m excited, too. see you then.

-

Their meeting was…interesting, to say the least. Rather than say hello like most people, Shoyo instead thought that it would be a good idea to slide right up to Kenma’s side and lean over his shoulder just to see the screen of his PSP.

Kenma responded by head-butting him, and Shoyo turned the same shade of red he did whenever someone gave him an unexpected compliments, and then they went to get ice cream.

The strange thing about now is how Shoyo won’t stop fidgeting. Kenma sits cross-legged on the floor with his back to the tv, while Shoyo sits on his bed. His feet bounce against the floor, toes just barely tapping against the carpet before jumping off again. His back is ruler-straight, and incredibly stiff. He looks ready to break.

He was fine before they came to his house. He was relatively ok throughout dinner, even though Kenma’s mother wouldn’t stop asking him questions. But once they got to his room, he started doing….this.

Kenma frowns. He shouldn’t be upset – if anything, he should be trying to claim the space as his own. He hasn’t even tried to look in the clear bins by Kenma’s bed. They’re mostly full of useless things Kuroo pawned off on him, but the trinkets are small and colorful. Shoyo should have dived into them already. Kenma left one open slightly on purpose just for him.

He hasn’t glanced at any of the drawers once.

“Shoyo,” Kenma says. His voice comes out cracked and awkward in the stiff air.

“Y-yes!” Shoyo almost squeaks, glancing at him for only a second before looking away. “What’s up?”

“You’ve been acting strange. Are you ok?”

“I’m not acting strange!” Shoyo says quickly. Kenma narrows his eyes. That was a little too quickly to be normal. He goes to sit next to Shoyo, dipping the mattress down just enough to momentarily throw off Shoyo’s balance.

“If you don’t want to be here, you ca-“

Shoyo turns to him and gasps loudly. He claps his hands on Kenma’s shoulders, and practically shouts, “no! I don’t want to leave! It’s nothing like that at all, really!”

Kenma briefly wonders if anger is the proper emotion to feel in this situation. Would most people be angry that their friend is upset over something that must have something to do with them, but refuses to elaborate on what the problem is? All he feels is weariness, similar to the slump he feels in the middle of an exhausting practice. He doesn’t want to play this game anymore.

“Shoyo.” Kenma says, gently brushing Shoyo’s hands off of him, letting their fingers brush together when their hands fall to the bed, “please. What’s the matter?”

Shoyo slowly draws his hands away until they’re no longer touching. “I feel weird around you, Kenma. It’s like – ok, I guess it’d be like when you try to toss to someone, and you’re not entirely certain if it’s gonna make it to them, and it doesn’t really, but they run to it and spike the ball and everything ends up right? So you’re proud but you feel weird, kind of like you let them down, except you didn’t. You know?”

Kenma blinks. “Uh, no. Not really.”

“Oh.” Shoyo bites his lip and stares really intensely down at his hands. “Um. How else do I explain this…” He mutters a few incomprehensible words under his breath before snapping his fingers and nearly bolting upright. “I got it! I. Well. I feel a little differently around you now, Kenma.”

Kenma blinks again. He is completely lost. “Do you not like me anymore?” He asks. “Was it the dinner? Or was it the Mario game we played?”

“No, no, no!” Shoyo shakes his head rapidly. “It’s. Um. The opposite of what you said.”

“…So you like me _too_ much.”

Shoyo tenses up and curls his shoulders inward, trying to make himself look as small as possible. He lowers his head and nods quickly, though the gesture is more along the lines of a rough few shakes of his head.

“Oh.” Kenma opens his mouth, looking for something else to say, but words are utterly lost on him. “ _Oh_ ,” he says again.

He doesn’t know what else to say, or even what to feel. He never would have expected Shoyo to have  _feelings_ for him. Shoyo’s definitely a friend, and he’s one of the few people that Kenma’s actually let into his life. Shoyo is comfortable; Shoyo is routine. Shoyo is important.

“I’ve never thought of you in that way before,” Kenma says, pointedly avoiding the fact that he’s never really thought of  _anyone_  in that way before. “I don’t know if I feel the same,” he adds, looking away. He doesn’t want to see Shoyo’s reaction to that.

“It’s ok,” Shoyo says quietly. “I didn’t really expect you to.” He laughs quietly. “I feel better now that I’ve said it out loud.”

“Do you want to date me?” Kenma asks.

“W-w-what!?”

“Do you?”

Shoyo takes a deep, audible breath. His exhale isn’t a sigh so much as a release of whatever pressure that’s built up inside of him throughout their conversation. He’s like a balloon with too much air in it; if he doesn’t let some of it out, he might float away. “Well. Uh. Yeah, I think so.”

When Kenma responds, he picks his words carefully. No dating sim in the world could have prepared him for this situation. All he has to rely on is how well he knows Shoyo, and how well he knows himself. “I wouldn’t be against dating you. Just because I don’t feel that way right now doesn’t mean I won’t feel the same later on.”

“Really!?” Shoyo says. Kenma steals a glance at him, and sees nothing but pure shock.

He nods.

“So now we’re…?”

“Dating? Yeah, I think so.”

“Oh, ok.”

Kenma has no idea what to say now, and from the look of it, neither does Shoyo. They both sit on his bed, looking around at anything this isn’t each other. Whenever Kenma steals a glance at him, all he can focus on is the waver of his lips.

Neither of them have any idea what to do next, either. This awkward, poignant silence continues on for a few minutes. Kenma soon becomes convinced that this is the longest Shoyo has ever just sat there and done absolutely nothing. He isn’t too proud of being the cause for this.

What drives Kenma to break the silence is simply the desire to see Shoyo act like himself again, and nothing else. He slips off of his bed just long enough to grab his psp and a disk out of his drawer, and returns to his previous spot. Shoyo watches him curiously.

Kenma pops the new disc in, and hands the console off to Shoyo. “It’s a rhythm game,” he explains. “I think you should try it.”

“I hardly ever play games, though! I’m gonna suck!” Shoyo says, turning the psp around in his hands. “I don’t even know how to turn this on!”

Kenma reaches over and flicks the power button on. Shoyo watches quietly as the screen comes to life. He scrolls around the menu, looking for the option to start the game. He finds it much sooner than expected.

He scoots a little closer to Shoyo – just to see the screen better so he can give him advice, but also partially because couples are supposed to be affectionate and moving closer just feels  _right_ – and feels a small spark of pride at the flush that spreads across Shoyo’s face when he notices. It’s a chain reaction, starting in his cheeks and spreading over just about every centimeter of exposed skin.

Shoyo was right about one thing; he’s horrid at the game. He only gets worse when Kenma yawns and rests his head on his shoulder, but he gets used to it before long. A small, pleased grin worms its way onto Shoyo’s face even as he continues to lose.

When Shoyo wins his first game, Kenma isn’t sure how to congratulate him. He settles for snaking his arm down and giving his knee a gentle squeeze, figuring that it’s an affectionate gesture to make. He really has no idea what he’s doing.

Shoyo nearly stops breathing when he does that. It takes a little bit of consolation before he returns to normal.

They’ll figure out this strange, new dynamic one gesture, one text message, one day at a time. It’ll become routine eventually – Kenma is certain of that much.


End file.
